EotE: Adjusting Shadows of a Black Sun

As I may be running this adventure next month at an event, I decided to it look over with an eye for scaling and adjusting it for use with over four players, like I did with Escape from Mos Shuuta back in February.

Again FFG has released printable PDFs of the pre-gen characters in the adventure, along with two additional PC's not featured in this Free RPG Day adventure.


FFG came up with an effective way for the pre-generated characters' Obligations to directly effect the adventure, given that players chose to take on additional and how much Obligation at the beginning of the adventure. This was achieved with sidebars noting how a scene may be affected by how much Obligation a certain PC has. The two bonus PC's one can download off of FFG's site come with their own written Obligation and options to increase it for benefits, but there are no sidebars in the adventure for those Obligations to effect the story, so if you're running with a group more than four and/or some of your players are using CH-1 or Grabow there's no preplanned opportunity during the adventure to have those Obligations cause trouble for the PCs. Here's the ideas I came up with:

Grabow's Obligation is pretty easy to handle: He's got a Bounty on his head. The simplest thing to do is during a point in which it makes sense (at the Umbra Club or when travelling between locations works best I believe), have a bounty hunter or a few show up and attempt to apprehend him. The number of hunters could be correlated to the amount of Obligation that was taken on:

• 10 is just a single lead bounty hunter (I'd suggest using either Lar'Omx [Rival] stats minus the poisoned claws, or the Journeyman Hunter [Rival] stats from the Core Rulebook minus the disruptor rifle.)
• at 15 add an hired gun (treat as either a Black Sun Lackey [Minion], or an Apprentice Hunter [Minion] from the Core book)
• and at 20 throw in another hired gun. Easy Peasy.

CH-1's is a bit tougher to work with: It has an Obsession for perfecting itself. Here's a couple ideas I came up with:

CH-1, Gadgeteer Bounty Hunter

• CH-1 crossed paths with an individual in a bad way in pursuit of its Obsession, severity ranging from coercion (10), to theft (15), to armed robbery (20). That individual wants revenge and has connections to the Zelcomm Industries smuggling ring. The Zelcomm Enforcers have been notified that CH-1 is operating in that city sector, and are ordered to disable the droid above all others if they encounter it.
• Another option is when ever CH-1 is dealt a Critical Injury it also suffers an additional 1 strain for every 5 points of Obligation it has. This I think represents CH-1's high concern of it's own perfection coupled with a wounded pride getting the better of it.

As far as any combat encounters, all I'd suggest is adding an additional minion to each group the PCs encounter if you're running the adventure with five or six players. I believe that should provide enough challenge, but of course a good GM should adjust it is he thinks the PCs are having too easy or hard a time.

As for scaling difficulty for the final fight, the good advice given in the the adventure is all you need!

May The Force Be With You! ;{١

RL Blues

Hey guys,

I've had a bit of a rough week since my last post, I don't want to want to bog you down with my concerns, but I'd just like to vent them a little. So feel free to skip. 

About a week ago, the Missus and I noticed my cat, Freya, was having difficulties having a bowel movement. We finally took her into the vet on Friday, had her looked at, and left with some 'kitty x-lax'. 24 hours later, no poop, so we took her back to the vet Sunday for hydration and two enemas. Still nothing. At this point we were getting really worried, so my better half took her to the animal hospital yesterday, and kept strong through the whole ordeal of x-rays, more enemas, and more medication.

Long story short, Freya finally did her business, it only took a load of stress and about $800 dollars in vets bills to pull it off. We are both immensely relieved and exhausted. We still need to keep her medicated for sometime.

This event also chose to arise right around the time I my Mother passed away two years ago. Last Sunday whilst Freya was back at the vet for the second time, my Grandpa came over to Victoria to visit for the day. It was great to see him, and helped relieve our collective worries.

I also worked an extra shift this week, and didn't get to game at all last weekend, so that probably contributed some small measure. Plus I've been feeling a bit off myself.

You gotta take the lows with the highs. 

I'm starting to feel better, and about ready to get back into the geekery!

Cheers! 

13th Annual Froth Barrel Tourney

This Saturday I was very fortunate to make it up to Nanaimo for the 13th Annual Froth Barrel Tourney, a local RPG event than has seen many a year and many a theme, from post-apocalyptic to blaxsploitation. Although called a tournament, it's not hugely competitive and more of an excuse for the large amount of prizes to be given out, and to award roleplaying recognition with awesome custom built trophies.

I recall vaguely hearing about the Froth Barrel Sodality many years ago, possibly before I moved from Parksville to Victoria, and I had the chance to meet some of it's regular players/GMs last February at GottaCon. At the time I had made it a point to attend, but several months went by without hearing anything until the beginning of the week prior. I saw that several local gamers I play with were planning on attending, so I registered and found some to carpool with in the wee hours of the morning.

This year was horror-themed scenario called Explorers of the Frontier, and was run using Savage Worlds as the system. The overarching plot shared between all the tables was that a group of survivalists were taking part in an survival challenge for several days on a remote island in the Atlantic, but things suddenly become a life or death situation when the teams encounter an infestation of giant termite-like insects that have a taste for human flesh.

There was an attendance of about twenty people that were divided between five tables with a GM each, and each group of three played three sessions between 8:30am to 6:00pm. At the end of each session the players filled out a sheet listing the best roleplayers, team players, and along with the luckiest of the session, and a place to rate your GM on a scale of 1 to 10. A cool idea, though if I have one suggestion is that each session you play with the same group as the previous session, so you're going to be voting for the same players each session. I think it'd be more interesting if they shuffled the players a bit between groups each session, but I also understand how this would make it difficult for in-game for a group of PC's to be constantly portrayed each session, not to mention give each group time to synergise.

Many appropriately themed prizes...

Playing that many hours near straight takes a lot out of a gamer, but I got to experience Savage Worlds more, and through the playstyles of three GMs. Combat in SW is nice and fast, but one issue I have with it is the Shaken status effect: don't get me wrong, I think that it's a clever mechanic to represent being overtaken in some way, the problem I see is that you end up with scenarios where an enemy hits you and you are Shaken (essentially unable to perform actions), and the following turn you can attempt to recover from being Shaken; and you can succeed only to take another hit and become Shaken again before you have time to take an action. This can really draw encounters out and be a tad frustrating for the players when all it seems that they're doing is trying to remove being Shaken, but I understand how it swings both ways and effects NPCs the same, and how the generalness speed of combat rounds help alleviate the player's having to sit on their laurels.

Also this was a horror-themed scenario, so the combat encounters might have been a little swayed balance-wise as there was a fairly high lethality to most encounters. Each table was given around 18 or so pregen characters to use; and although our group didn't lose a PC until the second table, and three to four a our last table, I've heard the groups of less merciful GMs go through over half the amount of pregens. In fact only one PC out of all played at the tourney made it from the very beginning of the scenario to end alive.

All in all it was a blast, the sessions were a hoot, which the GMs did great jobs running, and it was fun talking to other groups about their PCs' similar and different experiences. The common ending to the scenario was military action to destroy the island (along with most cases the PCs) in order to protect the world from the deadly threat: A perfect pessimistic ending to a horror game.

Group Monster-A-Gogo posing an award victory

At the end of the tourney door prizes were awarded, followed by the voted awards. The champion trophies and runner up certificates were awarded to attendees for the following categories:

The Lady Lysistrata Award of Froth - given to the "Outstanding Female Player" Bonnie, local Victoria gamer.

The Sir Alec Guinness Award of Froth - given to the "Outstanding Male Player"

The Brothers Grimm Award of Froth - given to the "Fashionably Enchanting"

[Sorry No Photo]

The Stephen Fry Award of Froth - given to the "Classiest Gamer - Larger Than Life"

The Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Award of Froth - given to the "Best Dice - Luckiest Gamer"

The Buzz Aldrin Award of Froth - given to the "Honourable Mention Player"

The Christopher Lee Award of Froth - given to the "Best Supporting Gamer"

[See Photo Below]

The Machiavelli Award of Froth - given to the "Most Valuable Role Player"; which by vote was surprisingly this very author! I am truly and deeply honoured!

The H. Edgar Allen Poe Buckler of Froth - given to the "Most Valuable Game Master"; awarded by popular vote to the organizer of the event: Pat.

The gorgeous and most coveted Lord Blackthorne's Tankard of Froth of "Group Role Playing Champions", awarded to Victoria's own gaming collective Pat's Pathfinders, whom I was recently press-ganged inducted into just before the tournament. 

Aside from the great honour of being named and awarded Most Valuable Role Player, and doing my part getting Pat's Pathfinders named Group Role Playing Champions, I also received 1st Runner Up certificate for Classiest Gamer-Larger Than Life and 2nd Runner Up certificate for Fashionably Enchanting.

Swag from Froth 2013 (L-R): Lucky Ace of Spades; Froth namebadge; MVRP Champion Trophy, Hatchet, and Certificate that entitles me to a +3 weapon at all future Froth Tourneys; Froth insect d6's; door prize model catapult; and Pat's Pathfinders 'Horror Hunter' button.

I am super thankful to everyone; Pat the coordinator, the GMs, the players, and especially my carpool buddies from Pat Pathfinders. Can't wait till next year!

The following Sunday I spent most of the at Thetis Lake taking it easy. I must say I had a pretty darn good weekend.

Cheers! ;{١

Edge of the Empire: Core Rulebook Read Impressions - Part II + Bonus

Howdy everyone!

It figures the night I try to both finish both writing down my impressions of the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Core Rulebook and actually get a chance to listen to the Order 66 Podcast live, my internet decides to be squirrelly. Oh well, I must press on!

As we dig in to the later chapters, we begin to see more new material; the stuff that makes you buy the book if you know the system from the Beta and Beginners game; the stuff I've been waiting for.

Chapter VII: Starships and Vehicles

Cleaned up rules and layout, with an expanded vehicles profiles section. There are still a few iconic ships missing from the section that are more likely to be touched upon in Age of Rebellion. That said, I like that they listed stats for many of the more obscure starships. If I have one peeve, it's that the image for the GAT-12H Skipray Blastboat has a major flaw in its design. (#fanboyproblems)

[As I mentioned in my previous post, stats for the Ghtroc 720 have been removed, but are still available here at Triumph & Despair, and C. Steven Ross just posted custom starship sheets for the Wayfarer, Lambda Shuttle and Luxury 3000 Space Yacht (my old Saga Edition group's ship of choice)]

Chapter VIII: The Force

Now this chapter underwent major errata corrections in the Beta, and boy did it need it; it was by far the most confusing chapter to try and wrap your head around. The layout now makes more sense, and the wording is a bit clearer; but to be honest it still could've used more clarification.

One area that is confusing is the listing of the Upgrades for the force powers, they don't appear to be listed in any semblance of order when presented, such as by general location on the force power tree or even in alphabetical order. What makes this even more difficult is the Upgrades share common names, but the specific effects might differ.
Here's an example: There are three Control Upgrades, and three Range Upgrades in the Sense Force Power Tree. The three Range Upgrades grant the same effect and are essentially ranked upgrades (this makes sense for them all the share the same name because they all do the exact same thing); whereas the three Control Upgrades for the tree each grant a different effect; this means that if you're reading the more in-depth description of an upgrade listed on the page, you have to read through each Control Upgrade in the force power tree to find out if a) it's the version of Control Upgrade you're looking for, b) its relative position in the tree, and c) if you can purchase it. Each of the three Force Powers suffers from this lack of organization of it's upgrades and makes cross-referencing more time consuming.

This could've been alleviated a bit by giving each Upgrade an identifier of some sort, such as a numerical one (Control Upgrade I, II, III, etc) that flows left to right in descending order on the tree. I don't think such an inclusion would've been a problem given that most Upgrades can only be purchased in an order dictated by the tree anyway.

Let's hope that FFG gets this ironed out by the time they put out Force and Destiny. ;{١

Chapter IX: The Game Master

This chapter has been greatly expanded from the eight pages in the Beta book, to nearly forty. Many GM sections of the RPG books tend to be fairly similar, but it's always nice to see new advice, whether it's generic or genre-specific, and this chapter has plenty of both. I know for a fact that veteran of every Star Wars RPG Sterling Hershey was the author of this chapter, and his expertise shows in the writing.

EotE Dice Pool example - Success

The chapter touches upon a tons of aspects of GMing, such as managing groups, running games, storytelling, interpreting the dice pool with examples, using Boost & Setback dice, using Strain, using Fear, Destiny Points, Obligation, Motivation, et cetera.; there's even an interesting sidebar on Using Music and Props. They certainly cover all their bases and I am serious impressed of the wealth of knowledge and advice in this chapter.

EotE Dice Pool example - Failure

One thing I find a bit amusing is a that sidebar talks about 'That Star Wars Feeling' and it mentions how horror isn't a common genre in Star Wars and should be limited in its use. Yet, the introduced rules for Fear checks seem to go against this somewhat. I know that fear and being afraid of something are different than being horrified, but when an example of a Formidable Fear check is "combat against things incomprehensible to one's mind" or "fear so crippling that sanity cracks" that begins to sound like its dipping into horror territory. (Cthulhu Mythos meets Star Wars? Now that would be an fun and interesting alternate universe campaign...) I find the concept of Fear checks an interesting addition to a Star Wars RPG, as we'd normally equate the heroes as being fearless against any threats; but remember that fear is a path to the dark side of the Force, so it makes sense from a thematic point. It's also nice that when a group encounters a rancor there's a bit of mechanical support to tell them they probably shouldn't tangle with this ferocious beast. And it's suggested Fear checks are best applied in unusual or infrequent situations, so that sounds good to me.

There are a good number of pages dedicated to pretty much everything one would need to know for creating adventures and running campaigns. The last couple pages cover a few interesting alternate/optional rules such as: passive checks, alternative initiative rules, and one-check combat resolution.

Chapter X: The Galaxy

Wow, this chapter is amazing! It's jam packed with break downs of all the astrographical areas of the Galaxy and their social/economical/political leanings with a gazetteer of several famous planets; it's like the Star Wars Essential Atlas (one of my favourite books) condensed into a chapter with emphasis on generating story and plot hooks for your game group.

One thing that caught my eye is a piece of art in the section discussing hyperlanes; the exact piece is seen the the Beginners Game except in I believe as an earlier draft, because the woman in the picture's hair is a different cut and colour. It's funny little things like that I notice. :p

Chapter XI: Law and Society

This chapter covers the largest influential groups of the Galaxy: The Empire, The Alliance, Black Sun, and The Hutts, along with some of the smaller groups like the Corporate Sector Authority (there's even a sidebar for Ploovo Two-For-One, whom I was going to work into my last EotE game), the Zann Consortium, the Tenloss Syndicate (one of my earliest posts was homebrew rules for them in Saga Edition, perhaps I should see if I can update it for EotE), and the Bounty Hunters Guild.

Following that we get a primer on the various laws your characters are highly likely to end up on the wrong side of.

Chapter XII: Adversaries

We get an expanded bestiary as it were of a large assortment of Minions, Rivals, and Nemeses your PC's may encounter. There's a wide variety and the system easily allows one to modify a pre-existing NPC to create just the right adversary.

Chapter XIII: Trouble Brewing

And last but not least, the final chapter of the book is an adventure called Trouble Brewing. I don't want to spoil it, but here's the basic gist of the adventure: the group learns of an individual named Bandin Dobah who is causing trouble for a community of smugglers and fringers on Formos, and they soon become embroiled in said trouble.

Trouble Brewing

Browsing through the adventure, it looks pretty well written and structured, with optional encounters that can be thrown in to add variety or flavour. I'll try to post my future impressions on the adventure when I run it.

Final Thoughts and Impressions

The beginning of my read through was a little boring, as I already read and new the majority of the rules, but when I reached the later chapters (especially The Game Master, The Galaxy, and Law and Society) I was drawn in. Though a hefty I think it's weight in content is well worth it's price.

Bonus Note: Yesterday was the launch of The New Order 66 Podcast kickstarter, and whilst I was listening to the podcast it already met it's funding goal in the first 12 hours; and as of me writing this, has reached over 300%; and there's still 24 days left! Stretch goals ahoy! Even if you're a long time fan of the boys like myself, or a new time listener $20 nets you a bunch of growing swag including a set of map tiles by master cartographer Christopher West of Maps of Mastery, various tokens for roll20, and a custom module for Edge of the Empire written by co-host of the Order 66 Podcast, GM Chris called Dead Man's Hand and an adventure by the other co-host GM Dave called Ice Station Zulu.

And there's more to come! Stay tuned!

And if you haven't heard Order 66 before and enjoy Star Wars RPGs, get off your duff and do it!

May the Force be with You! ;{١

Unrelated P.S. Better Than Any Man, the Free RPG Day adventure for Lamentations of the Flame Princess is now available on PDF for as much (or as little) as you want.

Edge of the Empire: Core Rulebook Read Impressions - Part I

It's mine! All mine!

As you may have guessed, I picked up my copy of the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Core Rulebook (along with the Game Master's Kit) yesterday and have been spending all my free time reading though it.

Holy crap this sucker is THICK. At nearly 445 pages, it has the highest page count of any of my RPG books!

Now I'm not much of a review writing kinda guy and I believe my fellow gamers can do it better justice than I could, so I'm just going to write about the impressions I get as I read through this dreadnought-sized tome. Also note my impressions are going to be from someone who's read and played the Beta of this game, not as a new player/GM to the system; so they're subjective and biased. I'm going to review the first half of the Core Rulebook, which contains most of the crunchy mechanical rules. The remainder I believe contains more of the fluff.

General Impressions

The layout is nice and tight, and the art is superb right from the get go. Lifting the front cover you are greeted with this awesome endpaper image of a stellar field expanding on and outwards from the bright horizon of Tatooine with the tiny form of a ship (looks like YT-2400) leaving the planet on the verso side. The field continues into the recto where a thin nebulae is illuminated by the binary stars Tatoo I and Tatoo II. I love it and I want a desktop wallpaper of it.

Inside this cover is also a small pamphlet titled 'Read This First'. It's six pages cover an introductory story to the game, roleplaying, and the universe of Star Wars; something to hand to your players who aren't familiar with RPGs and/or Star Wars. (Yes, both those people do exist!)

Chapter I: Playing the Game

To be honest, having learnt and played both the Beta and the Beginners Game, I felt no need to read this chapter thoroughly. It goes over the Core Mechanic, the Dice Pool, Obligations, etc. in over a dozen or so pages. Although it's concise, it'll still a lot for players and GMs who are unfamiliar with EotE to wrap their heads around, let alone people new to RPGs in general.

For those people, I'd suggest to picking up/playing the Beginner Game before deciding if they really want to learn the game via the Core Rulebook, as it introduces the system better, and it's still usable if you do end up getting the Core since it gives you a set of dice.

Chapter II: Character Creation

For those familiar with the Beta book, this chapter looks fairly similar except for updated errata rules, adjusted Talent Trees, and expanded information on Species, Careers, and Specializations. One inclusion I really do like is the five "Stories" listed under each Career that can be used to help flesh out character backgrounds; something that really helps differentiate your character from another PC with the same Career. Both Obligations and Motivations were given much more detail than in the Beta book. (Better definitions between Obligations like Dutybound and Oath for example)

One interesting thing of note is the Ghtroc 720 Light Freighter ("the space turtle") from the Beta has been replaced with the Wayfarer Medium Transport as a selectable ship for the player group. In fact when I skipped ahead to vehicle profiles in Chapter VII: Starships and Vehicles I saw no entry or mention of it. I wonder what prompted this change.. (Perhaps it had something to do with how it looked?)

[Stats for the Ghtroc 720 can still be found at C. Steven Ross's excellent EotE blog Triumph & Despair]

Chapter III: Skills

This chapter is also similar to Beta, with generally the same descriptions for skills and related dice results. There is a new sidebar covering skills uses for Gambling, similar to the rules of Sabacc given in the Free RPG Day adventure Shadows of a Black Sun. I personally prefer the rules in the adventure over those in the Core Rulebook (so FFG get off your duffs and release the adventure on PDF so we can all use them! ;p)
The Social Skills sidebar has been cleaned up a bit, and now Negotiation can used along with Cool to oppose Negotiation. Both Pilot skills have been renamed Piloting, and the Surveillance skill that showed up in the Beta (and was subsequently axed by the Errata) doesn't make an appearance.

Chapter IV: Talents

This chapter provides more in-depth rules for both standard Careers and Force Sensitive Exiles, and like the chapter before it is just an update of the rules presented in the Beta presented in tables and columns occasional broken by art. Nothing too interesting. The changes to talents were certainly for the better as it fixed many of the broken or weak ones.

Chapter V: Gear and Equipment

Aside from the usual rules, now we're starting to see a bit more material that wasn't in the Beta: sidebars that offer advice on bringing the PC's motivations to bear via Obligation and credits, and advice how to manage the game economy. I found that the advice given in the sidebar "Keeping The Crew Hungry" particularly struck a chord with me:

You see, back when I was running Star Wars Saga Edition for my group, I realized once my players got their own ship and a decent amount of credits their drive somewhat changed. It was more difficult to wrangle them with plot hooks, as they now had a ship and the funds to go and do whatever they wanted. (Not that I was opposed to the game turning sandbox-style, after all that is one of the reasons why I gave them a ship in the first place. They did create several of their own fun adventures.) I think there was a general feeling that the PC's didn't have to follow the metaplot if they didn't want to; they could just pickup and leave. I tried (like one of the suggestions in the sidebar) to reduce their funds slowly by ship maintenance and upkeep, but that didn't help much. I also considered having their credit accounts sliced and robbed, but although it would make for a motivating plot hook, it also kinda felt like a dick move, especially if they couldn't get their funds back.

Anyway, I think this why I like Obligation so much, it's a both a plot hook, a cost, and a motivation that's more than just money. And the suggestion of giving low cash rewards helps keep the group always vested in the next job.

They also added additional rules for Selling and Trading, great for those who really get into their career as an Explorer-Trader, and GM advice for players who always loot the bodies for a quick cred. The section on Customization and Modifications has a few new welcome additions, particularly for melee weapons.

Chapter VI: Conflict and Combat

Much the same as the Beta really. A new sidebar on Flying in its relation to maneuvers has been added. There are a few changes to the Improvised Weapons rules I'm happy with as my group and I hummed and hawed over the rules in the Beta.


Alright. That's about half the book done. We have seven chapters left: Starships and Vehicles, The Force, The Game Master, The Galaxy, Law and Society, Adversaries, and an adventure called Trouble Brewing. So stay tuned to part II where I'll give my impressions on the remaining half of the Core Rulebook! And following that I'm going to give my impressions of the Game Master's Kit screen and booklet.

Click Here for part II of my Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Core Rulebook impressions!

May the Force be with You! ;{١

Thank the Maker!

Howdy everyone, let's begin with my top announcement:

The Star Wars: Edge of the Empire core rulebook is officially released this Friday! Thank the Maker!!! 

It feels like we've been waiting forever for this! If everything goes well, the copy I have on reserve along with the Game Master's Kit at my FLGS should be in my hands this Friday. I cannot begin to express my elation! I'll have to resist letting it distract me when I'm GMing Dresden Files later that day.

If you haven't read all I've written about this system, and/or aren't sure if it'd be your cup of tea, then check the video below FFG released that give an overview of the concepts, design, and mechanics of EotE and the rest of their Star Wars RPG line. It may give you further insight.

Phew. Now that I've got that out of my system, onto other news:

- Last night was the first play session of the bi-weekly Deadlands: Reloaded game I joined a month or so ago (two weeks ago we met up for character generation); I must say I rather enjoyed it. I'm quite happy with my shady, card shark huckster Lemmy, and I like the Savage Worlds system: nice, simple and quick. When I first played Savage Worlds at GottaCon two years ago, I wasn't that impressed and didn't think much of it. Now, having read the system, some of its campaign settings, and played a bit more of it, I now believe I figured out why it didn't really catch my interest initially:

One part of it was the scenario was presented as more of tactical wargaming-esqe combat encounter on 3D terrain. (Savage Worlds' rules support grid-less miniature play.) Being not a particularly big fan wargaming in general I can see my dislike; I at times got (and still get) frustrated with the heavy-tactical nature of most d20 systems, and I'd been playing "off the grid" so to speak for sometime.

The second part is I was coming hot off the heels of playing RPGs like Dresden Files and reading about the FATE system, where Fate Points have such great usage and potential in the game. Compared to that I found the Bennies used in Savage Worlds a bit underwhelming. (I still do believe they feel underpowered, and much prefer the Fate Chips variant in Deadlands which at least gives more variety.)

Third and finally, both my friend and I felt a constrained by what our characters could do. Our GM pretty much stuck to the rules and wouldn't let us attempt anything else outside of the box so to speak. (This ties directly into both the first and second points.)

Anyway, all those points aside I've come to appreciate Savage Worlds for what it is: a solid, quick, and easy system. I look forward to our next Deadlands session in two weeks.

- As I mentioned earlier I'll be GMing my third session of Dresden Files this Friday. I was a little unsure with my first session two weeks ago, but my second session turned out awesome. I'm getting more confident running contemporary fantasy now, and our last game gave me a ton of story and plot ideas.

- A good friend of mine, fellow gamer, and LARPer who goes by the name of ~Marcusquintustitus on deviantArt, wrote a journal entry called Creating the perfect DnD party... in LARP. Although I don't LARP (yet...) I thought it was very well written and thought provoking when it comes to actual living adventurers as it were coming together and forming a cohesive group.

- I was pleased to find out today about the Day of Gaming on Sunday August 18th at UVIC here in Victoria where there is to be boardgaming, RPG demos, and a Netrunner tournament! (I guess I better find time to get some practice in and construct a few decks.) I'm also considering the prospect of running a session of the Beginner Game or perhaps the Free RPG adventure for EotE. It would definitely satisfy the GREAT NEED I'll no doubtlessly have to run EotE once I obtain the core rulebook... We shall see how things develop.

And now I must finish my dinner and go for a swim!

Cheers! ;{١

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canuckleheads, and to everyone else!

As some of you may have noticed, I changed up the blog's layout a bit as I believe I got tired of the old one. Anyway, other than that little tid-bit, the only things I have to say of note in this short post are that we've picked up our old Legend of the Five Rings campaign again, so you might be seeing some more of Mirumoto Miyamoto's Reports (maybe). The other thing I'm mentioning is Stalker.

Stalker is an RPG I have been following for sometime. I have yet to acquire a copy, but all I've reading of it makes it seem amazing. It's based off of a Russian sci-fi short story called Roadside Picnic. (Another book I must add to my collection.)

This review by the Gentleman Gamer explains it in further detail and really sells it in my opinion. I recommend checking it out if Stalker sounds interesting to you.

Cheers Eh! ;{١